Report: Nazis harbored by US post-World War II

Known Nazis were given “safe haven” in the United States after the
second World War, a secret report out yesterday reveals.

Known Nazis were given “safe haven” in the United States after the second World War, a secret report out yesterday reveals.

The report, written in 2006 but kept secret by the Justice Department since then, says Washington “collaborated with persecutors” after 1945.

The Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, established to hunt down Nazis, knew that many of them had been granted entry into the U.S. even though their pasts were known about.

“America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became — in some small measure — a safe haven for persecutors as well,” the report, revealed in full by the New York Times, said.

The report tells how in 1954, the CIA helped Otto Von Bolschwing, an associate of Adolf Eichmann who had helped develop plans “to purge Germany of the Jews.”

Another case involved Arthur L. Rudolph, a Nazi scientist who ran the Mittelwerk munitions factory. He was brought to the U.S. in 1945 for his rocket-making prowess as part of Operation Paperclip, an American initiative to recruit scientists who had worked in Nazi Germany.

The report highlights a 1949 note from a very senior Justice Department official urging immigration officers to let Rudolph back into the U.S. after visiting Mexico because excluding him would be “to the detriment of the national interest.”